FROM THE BOOK
"When looking for the first time at Linda Salerno’s group of works 'Black Mirror'--which have not been publicly shown until now--one feels an irresistible draw, without being instantly able to explain why. They exude an unearthly power, and this power awakens the desire to penetrate the images' surface, to dive into the world obviously unfolding behind it.
Like all artists of note, Linda Salerno seduces. She is, of course, a female artist. But--paraphrasing a much-quoted sentence by the painter Ad Reinhardt--art is art, no matter its author's gender, and everything else is everything else. On the other hand, with her images Salerno demonstrates convincingly that art--according to a less frequently quoted sentence by Joseph Kosuth--doesn’t exclusively define itself as art in a kind of self-insemination process. Works of art are--depending on the cultural environment--sometimes more, sometimes less self-oriented and follow a logic that creates its building blocks from within. Works of art, however, also have repercussions on the outside. They don’t only affect other images but also the image that people make of their world."
Klaus Honnef, excerpted from Linda Salerno: The Seductive Games of Photography in Linda Salerno.
